D189.The hall clock in my front entry did not chime at half past six; it merely clicked, a small brass tongue dropping into a cog with the precision of an uncaring machine

On the fifth day of my trip, while I was standing in front of Giotto’s frescoes in the Bardi Chapel, my phone buzzed with an image.

It wasn't a text from Caleb. It was from Eli.

Eli had never texted me an image in his life. His digital communication with me had previously consisted exclusively of single-letter confirmations: *K* when I told him dinner was ready, or *Thx* when I sent him twenty dollars for his eighth-grade graduation.

The photo showed the kitchen table.

The red plastic folder—the one I had dropped into the trash can—was lying open on the wood. It had been retrieved, its edges slightly crumpled. Next to it sat three separate yellow legal pads, covered in Caleb's handwriting: messy, jagged, completely devoid of the clean, Helvetica-font efficiency Tori preferred.

Below the photo, Eli had typed:

*Dad tried to make the chicken casserole from the binder. He burned the bottom and set off the alarm. Chloe told him she was calling Gordon Ramsay to have him arrested.*

I smiled in the dark chapel, the blue light from the phone illuminating Fra Angelico's saints on the plaster wall.

*Me: Is the house still standing?*

*Eli: Barely. Finn put his missing sock in the blender because he wanted to see if it would turn into a smoothie. Dad didn't even yell. He just sat on the floor by the dishwasher and laughed until he choked.*

I looked at the small screen for a long time.

*Me: How is your father?*

A typing bubble appeared. Vanished. Appeared again.

*Eli: He didn't wear a tie all week. He missed two conference calls on Tuesday because we were fixing the chain on Maggie's tricycle. Mom called from the office at nine tonight and told him he was being unprofessional. Dad told her to check her billables and hung up on her.*

A chill ran down my arms that had nothing to do with the cool air of the church.

Caleb had never hung up on Tori in thirteen years of marriage. He had apologized to her for the weather; he had apologized to her when the caterers brought the wrong canapés to their anniversary party; he had apologized to her when her own mother forgot her birthday.

*Eli: Grandma?*

*Me: Yes, Eli?*

*Eli: Are you coming back?*

I looked up from the screen to the fresco above me. Saint Francis was standing before the Sultan, stepping into the fire with bare feet, his hands open, showing that faith was not an argument to be won, but a substance that could survive the heat.

Charles had loved that story. He wasn't a religious man—he spent his Sunday mornings tuning the carburetor on our ancient station wagon and listening to baseball on the AM radio—but he understood the idea that things have to be tested in the furnace before you know if they're real.

*Me: I have nine more days, Eli. I have to see Siena, and I have to eat wild boar ragù in Lucca. Then I am coming home.*

*Eli: Okay. Dad bought three gallons of white vinegar. The rug smells like a pickle, but the spot is gone.*

*Me: Good boy. Tell your father to salt the pasta water. More than he thinks. It should taste like the sea.*

*Eli: K.*

I walked out of the church into the midday heat of the Piazza Santa Croce. The air was thick with the smell of roasting espresso and diesel, the ancient and the modern tangled together like old vines.

My knee ached—a sharp, dull throb behind the patella that reminded me I was seventy-one and that four flights of stone stairs at the Bargello were three flights too many. But my lungs felt wide. For four years, since the ambulance had pulled out of my driveway with Charles’s body inside, I had been breathing through a straw, taking only enough air to keep the lawn mowed and the tea kettle boiled.

I walked down the Via de' Benci toward the river.

At the corner, a leather goods shop had a small window display: soft, unlined calfskin gloves in deep chestnut and moss green. I stepped inside.

"Signora," the shopkeeper said, bowing slightly from behind a wooden counter covered in brass tools. "Something for you?"

"For my daughter-in-law," I said, surprised by the words as they left my mouth.

"What size does she wear?"

"I have no idea," I said, looking at the smooth, elegant leather. "Something small. Tight. The kind of glove that doesn't allow you to hold a telephone while you're wearing it."

The shopkeeper smiled—a slow, conspiratorial Italian smile that understood everything without needing an explanation. "Ah. Size six and a half. Very disciplined."